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- 18-Jan-21 - "The Christian Way of Life in Human Relations," speech, General Assembly fo the National Council of Churches, St Louis (4 Dec 1957) | WIST on Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963).
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Quotations about misery
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Oftentimes, when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.
Lemony Snicket (b. 1970) American author, screenwriter, musician (pseud. for Daniel Handler)
The Wide Window (2000)
(Source)
There is no happiness in life, there is no misery, like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate a home.
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
The Tempest, Act 3, sc. 2 [Trinculo] (1610-11)
(Source)
If it be true, that men are miserable because they are wicked, it is likewise true, that many are wicked because they are miserable.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and critic
Aids to Reflection, “Prudential Aphorisms II” (1831 ed.)
(Source)
If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Austrian-English philosopher
Culture and Value, 1946 (1977) [tr. Winch (1980)]
(Source)
He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits.
Cormac McCarthy (b. 1933) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
All the Pretty Horses (1992)
(Source)
He who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing any thing but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.
A stranger to human nature, who saw the indifference of men about the misery of their inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the misfortunes and sufferings of those above them, would be apt to imagine that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more terrible, to people of higher rank than to those of meaner stations.
Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable.
We make ourselves miserable by first closing ourselves off from reality and then collecting this and that in an attempt to make ourselves happy by possessing happiness. But happiness is not something I have, it is something I myself want to be. Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over my body.
I live my life in celebration and in praise of the life I’m living. What you focus on expands. The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. The more you complain, the more you find fault, the more misery and fault you will have to find.
Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954) American TV personality, actress
“Words of the Week,” Jet (27 Oct 1986)
(Source)
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life: music and cats.
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
SYDNEY: You don’t seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
That thro certain Humours or Passions, and from Temper merely, a Man may be completely miserable; let his outward Circumstances be ever so fortunate.
PURITANISM: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Lives of the English Poets, “Pope” (1781)
(Source)
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
How long is life to the wretched, how short for the happy!
It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery.
Fellowship in woe doth woe assuage.
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy.
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.